The Woodhouse Civil War Over Health: Brothers Trade Barbs in High-Stakes Showdown

The Woodhouse brothers aren't sounding very brotherly in the tense make-or-break phase of health care reform and, perhaps, Barack Obama's presidency. Phrases like "anti-American" and "political hack" are the least of the insults flying back and forth between Brad, the communications director of the Democratic National Committee, and Dallas, the North Carolina director of a conservative free-market group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP).

To say the brothers are on opposite sides in a polarized environment barely hints at the depth of their differences or the colorful abandon of their language. This week's flashpoint is an AFP ad that features a cancer survivor claiming the heavy hand of government health reform could have killed her. It's running in 18 congressional districts against Democrats wavering on whether to vote yes or no. Politifact concluded everything in it is wrong and rated the spot "pants on fire."

"If he or his organization had an ounce of decency, they'd take down an ad that was called 'pants on fire,' " Brad told me in a phone interview. Was he saying his brother didn't have an ounce of decency? "I'm trying to drive the point home." He's particularly put out that his brother is targeting Rep. Bob Etheridge, a North Carolina Democrat who was friendly with the Woodhouse family and for whom Brad worked for several years. "That really just got under my skin on a personal level," he said. "But I guess to Dallas, it's all business."

Dallas, naturally, blames Brad, arguing that he and his fellow Democrats are trying to force Etheridge to support a bad policy his constituents don't want. It's ironic, Dallas told me in a separate phone conversation, that "the man that gave my brother his start ... my brother's going to help take him down." As for the ad, backed by $750,000 to $1 million, don't look for it to stop running in North Carolina or anywhere else before the end of the week. "This is absurd, telling us to put the ad down," Dallas said. "The ad is truthful and it is accurate."

Brad, 42, and Dallas, 36, grew up in Raleigh and talk to each other two or three times a week. "I don't have the time or the inclination to listen to everything that comes out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth, but if I get on the phone with my brother, he's going to be parroting it," Brad said. "If I slammed the phone down on my brother later tonight, it wouldn't be the first time I've done it," he added. "Sometimes it's not so much out of anger, it's just that I can't listen to it anymore."

Dallas got a call from Brad on Wednesday. "I just let him know that I was going to ask for this ad to be taken down," Brad said. Dallas confirmed, laughing, that "he didn't ask me to take it down. It was a courtesy call. He called to tell me he was going to publicly call on me to take it down." He added, "He is a spinmeister. He will try to spin anything. He will try to spin his own brother. I won't let the SOB do it."

The brothers have not always clashed so directly. Dallas used to be a television reporter and kept his opinions off screen. But early last year, when Brad was president of the liberal group Americans United for Change, the pair were at loggerheads over the stimulus bill. Last summer, Brad was asked to comment when Dallas organized a bus tour across North Carolina to protest attempts at health reform. "He was doing something anti-health care reform, anti-American," Brad says. Anti-American? He relents. "Not anti-American. Anti-health care reform."

Dallas said it was while covering government as a reporter that "I became suspect of government programs and suspect of motives. I believe this health bill is not about health care, it's about health control." His brother, he says, used to be a conservative Democrat, but then "he went up there with those wackos in Washington. He has veered left, left, left."

To Brad, Dallas has veered right, right, right. And that's coming from someone in a mixed marriage. Brad's wife is Republican and he says they try to avoid political arguments except when Dallas is around. "When he comes up here for some right-wing rally he stays with me," Brad said. "When he's there, boy, she's ready to jump in on his side and gang up on me."

Is there anything these brothers have in common? North Carolina State basketball. Fishing, skiing, golf. But mostly, a passion for politics. "We don't either of us garden or whatever. We're not exchanging gardening tips," Brad said. Dallas throws out a reason their relationship survives despite all. Their father, who died about 10 years ago, wasn't close to his only brother.

"He just drifted away from his brother. They regretted that later because they let a lot of years go by. There's some commitment on our side not to do that," Dallas told me. Yet in the very next breath he said of his own brother that "I want to beat him to a pulp. As long as he's trying to take people's liberty away, I want to beat him like a drunken, red-headed stepchild."

That's the kind of remark that can stun an interviewer into silence before slowly repeating each word to make sure it's accurate. It's also a taste of what goes on at family gatherings. "It doesn't bother us and it certainly doesn't bother me, because to me it's not personal," Dallas said. "But I think it makes other people uncomfortable. And it's also very loud." Does it ever get physical? "No, because I would beat his ass. He's smarter than that." Here's Brad's description of their skirmishes: "My side of the argument is based in fact and his is based in fantasy, so I usually get the better of him on these things."

The conservative cause of the week is the possibility that House Democrats might vote on changes they want to make to the Senate health bill, and in the same vote "deem" that the underlying bill has passed as well. It's a technique Republicans have used many a time, but as the moment of truth arrives, they are up in arms about it. And no one more so than Dallas. "I never thought I'd see my brother's party do something that shat upon the Constitution," he said. He portrays his brother as a "partisan political hack" and himself as a policy purist, upset by big government and overspending no matter which party controls Washington. "We are different in what motivates us," he said. "My brother wants to win political races. I want to win issues. It's not an accident we're in the jobs we're in."

Later, Brad gets the last word in an e-mail. "Just one thing -- I love my brother -- and I respect a lot of other people on the other side of this debate -- but the stakes are too high here -- the subject matter too important -- we don't care who it is -- when they try to stand in the way of reform with lies and myths -- we're gonna call 'em out."